Pro-Antagonism

I always get a little sad when I read about server closures, even if I’m not a current player. Even for an MMO, except in rare cases it’s usually in indicator of some wasting disease. In this latest round from SOE, I loved Star Chamber back in the day. We even made a couple cards for it, in another era. A CCG Boardgame hybrid released about a decade before its time, it’s a ridiculously adept match for where this kind of gaming is now: asymmetrical play on mobile and tablet devices. We live in an inherently dumb universe.

One of the other games, Cosmic Rift, isn’t one I ever played. But I thought you’d get a kick out of the hardware requirements:

So, maybe that game is pretty old. Maybe you shut a server like that down? But how much processing does a game like that take? I understand that it’s more a matter of service and support, but what I’m saying is that these are processes that can easily be replaced with community enthusiasm.

I wish there was a turnkey route to immortality for these wanderers, because the shift from game to service is especially dangerous for preserving history. To my mind, the Gold Standard for this kind of public transfer is Free Allegiance, enabled by by a full source code drop and an official blessing. From Microsoft, even, which is a company people associate less with community consciousness and more with liver theft.